IP Based Audio Systems? 37
pbrinich asks: "I am in the process of designing a new audio system for a house under construction. I have been looking for a purely IP-based audio system. Has anyone heard of a good, open, IP-based, multi-zone audio system that is ready for consumer use? I have read a bit on a company called netstreams and their DigiLinx line. Any thoughts?"
Barix (Score:4, Informative)
Id rather have wireless, which they seem to have. But I understand if you have a house wired with cat5 or better, its tempting to use it. Would be interesting for home surround systems, you dont have to run cables for your rear speakers, and not have to buy a wireless setup.
BTW, Barix popped up as a google sponsered link.
Re:Latency, latency, latency, latency... (Score:2, Informative)
AMX or Crestron? (Score:3, Informative)
Squeezebox2 (Score:3, Informative)
On my fairly forgiving (rather warm/laid back) main speaker system, I wasn't able to hear any difference at all when switching back and forth between the DACs on the Onkyo 901 and the SB2. I don't have golden ears or anything, but they're reasonably good, and digital and analog mode sounded identical to me. The 901 retailed at $1500 (though you could buy them at around $950), so the SB2 matching that means it's doing a pretty good job. If you happen to have gear that's better than mine, and you think you can hear a difference.... well, that's what the coax and optical outs are for.
The unit also has a headphone jack, which sounds good. It does not, however, seem to have a huge amount of onboard power, so you'd probably want a separate headphone amp for high-impedance cans like the Sennheiser HD580s or 600s. (They still sound good without one, but have much more authority with more power driving them.)
The higher-end models come with built-in 802.11g wireless, which is more than fast enough to support several streams (ie, several players), though if you got seriously into the networked music thing, with lots of stations, you'd probably want to do it with wires. The wireless model will also bridge to Ethernet via the single RJ45 jack. If you add a hub, you can bridge a whole stack of stuff to your WiFi.
You can control the boxes from either the included remote, using a very easy interface, or via web browser. If you have several SB2s, you can coordinate them all to play at the same time, so that you have synced music in several rooms or the whole house. (I believe it will do subgroups as well, but I have only the one and can't test that.) I'm not sure if units will sync from the remote or only from the web interface. I'm fairly sure you have to CREATE the sync via web browser, but I suspect it will probably just work from then on. I believe you'd hit play on any unit in a group, and they would all start playing.
Of course, if that DOESN'T work, you can add the feature yourself. The server software is Perl and very open-source. I believe the boxes themselves run Linux and can be hacked on, but honestly, the software is just so good that I can't really imagine wanting to. Maybe if I had a second one... that display really is neat, and it'd be fun to play with it for other stuff. I'd just hate to break my only one.
The box natively speaks MP3, FLAC, and WAV. The server software can translate from many other music formats, and will sync with iTunes if you have that. (I don't think it can play Apple's DRM, so you'd have to crack that first.) It understands CUE/BIN images, which is GREAT, because that's how I have all my music archived. It actually supports CUE/FLAC too, so I compressed all my music to save some space. I have verified that I get bit-perfect output... playing a DTS-encoded WAV file through the SB2 (at full volume, of course) gives me music on a DTS-enabled receiver, not just noise. If the bitstream is damaged in any way, DTS doesn't work. It just comes out as a hiss. So a DTS file is a great test of bit-perfect transfer... if you hear music, you're delivering a truly lossless stream.
If you archive your CDs losslessly, then you'll probably get better results from this unit than you'd get from most 'real' CD players. You can't scratch a CUE file, or get it dusty. I have no way to test it, but I'd guess that eliminating the vagaries of the optical pickup would probably diminish jitter a great deal. I've never learned how to hear digital clock jitter myself, but some people are very focused on the issue. I don't know if it REALLY matters, but if it does, my guess is that the SB2 should do a better job than most real CD transports would.
Overall, it has mo
Re:Latency, latency, latency, latency... (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe because DVD audio isn't MP3?
You need hardware-accelerated MPEG-2 decoding in video, a processor fast enough to demultiplex and decode your preferred audio stream AND the video, and buses fast enough to shove all that data through, alongside the usual OS noise. I don't recall ever seeing a sound card that offers hardware AC3 decoding. Your biggest latency issue is going to be the sound buffer: if you can't fill it fast enough, the system has to use a bigger one, and it will desync.
I'd check your system before you start blaming that. I've owned a Pentium III 900 MHz, an AMD Athlon XP 1700+, and a Pentium 4 3.0GHz system, and neither had any trouble at all with synchronization. Maybe it's your software, also. On a Windows box, WinDVD, PowerDVD, Windows Media Player, and PCFriendly all seemed to work fine for me on both systems.
Technical reference (Score:2, Informative)
Darwin.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Squeezebox2 (Score:4, Informative)
If you have several SB2s, you can coordinate them all to play at the same time, so that you have synced music in several rooms or the whole house. [...] I'm not sure if units will sync from the remote or only from the web interface. I'm fairly sure you have to CREATE the sync via web browser, but I suspect it will probably just work from then on. I believe you'd hit play on any unit in a group, and they would all start playing.
The synchronization can be done from any Squeezebox connected to a given SlimServer, with any other Squeezebox(es) also connected to that SlimServer. They do behave as you expect, in that the "play" signal from any member of the group propagates to all of the other members. The synchronized Squeezeboxes also share playlists, though, so you can organize a playlist (or load a saved one) on one Squeezebox that all of them will then follow.
Also, the SlimServer software ships with a Java-based Squeezebox emulator called SoftSqueeze. Your SlimServer web interface should have a link to it somewhere; in the Default skin, it's down in the lower-left corner of the left-hand frame. This software can be used to turn virtually any computer (since it's Java and all) into another Squeezebox, which will then connect to the SlimServer and appear exactly like a hardware Squeezebox. The SoftSqueeze clients can even be synchronized with hardware players.
Have fun!